Around Paris During The Design Week // 2012.

I was going through some of my Paris photos the other day, and I realised there were still (a few) about a million gems I never got to tell you about. So I decided to bundle them all together in a post which is mostly related to Paris Design Week, but also the awesomeness of Paris in general (as a couple of the things I am sharing with you here are not related to the design week at all). Due to a huge amount of images which I always have such a hard time culling, I will bring you a couple of other posts focussing on different areas and topics. So here goes…

Palais de Tokyo has had a number of uses during its 75-year history. Before the Centre Pompidou opened in 1977, it was the home of France’s national collection of modern art, and in the 1980s it presented photography, films, and objects and decor of the cinema. Eventually it even closed it’s doors to the public for three decades. It finally reopened earlier this year after an overhaul by architects Lacaton & Vassal. It is now known as “the biggest non-collecting contemporary art museum in Europe”.

Musée d’Art Moderne is located in the eastern wing of Palais de Tokyo – it is a major municipal museum dedicated to Modern and Contemporary art of the 20th and 21st century. During the Design Week, the gallery hosted ‘Generation Design’ exhibition curated by Gérard Laizé, general director of the nonprofit association VIA (Valorization of Innovation in Furnishing), to celebrate French Elle Décoration’s 25th anniversary. The exhibition took place in front of Raoul Dufy’s mesmerising “La fee electricite” (1937) – this painting covers an entire oval-egg-shaped room, it’s literally a painting you walk into (top images). Extraordinary!

Situated in a 1852 beautiful ornate building conceived by Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower), Le Bon Marché is world’s first department store. Iconic French designer Andree Putman reconfigured its trademark escalators shown here – the vast inner atrium is best viewed from the 2nd floor balcony, and is itself worth the trip! Here you will find superb edit of high-end fashion for men, women and children, and also furniture, home-wares and gifts. The gourmet food market, La Grande Epicerie, stocks tens of thousands of hard-to-find products from around the world. It’s incredibly beautiful and you simply must go there. And if my dodgy photo isn’t convincing you of it’s beauty, then perhaps this image might give you a better idea.

Oh baby… Hermès store on Rue de Sèvres was definitely one of the highlights of my trip. And that’s saying something! Housed in a former swimming pool, which in the 1930’s served as one of Paris’ oldest swimming clubs, the interior was redesigned by architect Denis Montel of studio RDAI, the firm responsible for all Hermès’ stores globally. The architect respectfully maintained the original tiled columns and floors, and ironwork on the upper balconies, while inserting a series of sensual sweeping timber structures reminiscent of oversized water drops which house the collection. See more (and much better) images here, although I really must warn you – this store is so, so, sooooo much more amazing in person than any photo ever managed to capture it. This I promise you.

As you know, I have a bit of a thing for shit-hot ceilings (see previous posts on said topic here and here), and these amazing ceilings were just some of the super awesome examples spotted in Paris.

Louis Vuitton’s Champs-Élysées Maison has an absolutely incredible crystal glass and mirrored ceiling designed by George Sexton Associates. Looking up always makes me feel excited, perplexed, dizzy and dazzled all at once.

In the meantime, Galeries Lafayette (another iconic department store) has a fantastic domed ceiling which sits on top of the 10-story central atrium in the women’s building. The store’s founder, Théophile Bader, commissioned Georges Chedanne and then his student Ferdinand Chanut to design this incredible building. The glass and steel dome was built in 1912.

The auditorium at Le Palais Garnier is the home of the stunning ceiling painted by Belorussian-born artistMarc Chagall. This incredible brightly coloured piece is lit by a spectacular crystal chandelier, embellishing a horseshoe-shaped auditorium with 1,900 red velvet seats. Oh yes, it’s pretty spesh.

Ok, back to Design Week stuff now. Paris cult store Colette is the home to an impressive selection of everything that’s so-hot-right-now and hard to find. If you’ve been to Paris, the chances are you’ve already been to this store. Anyway, during Paris Design Week, Colette windows displayed (must have!) children’s designer chairs from Knoll, and also a very cool cardboard installation by Woouf and Wanda Barcelona. Check out more images here.

As in all the other Cappellini showrooms throughout the world, one colour dominates the whole area – i.e. red in New York, blue in Los Angeles, yellow in Milan… and pink in Paris.

Address: 242 Boulevard Saint-Germain, 75007 Paris.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery. Image courtesy of Paris Design Week.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery, on the edge of the Marais, opened last year by young French art entrepreneurs Julien Lombrail and Loic Le Gaillard, who returned from London after opening their cutting-edge design/art gallery under the same name.

Swarm lighting installation, designed by rAndom International (previously), composed of over 3000 individual circuits organised into three rectangular forms. The light traveled like a swarm of bees across the three forms in response to surrounding noise.

Address: 54 rue de la Verrerie, 75004 Paris.

A Glass House installation. Image courtesy of Paris Design Week.

A Glass House by Quantum Glass & Szaas – a micro-architecture of Christian Biecher and two mirrors by Mathilda Bretillot.

About The Author

Dana is an award-winning interior designer living in Sydney, Australia.
With an unhealthy passion for design, Dana commits to an abnormal amount of daily design research. Regular travel and attendance at premier design events, enables Dana to stay at the forefront of the design world globally. While she is super serious about design, Dana never takes herself - nor design - too seriously.
Together with her life and business partner, Nick Hughes, Dana is Boss Lady at Studio Yellowtrace, specialising in Interior Design, Creative Direction and Special Projects. The studio takes a highly conceptual and holistic approach to translating brands & ideas into places.